


Goodnight, Love

by Duck_Life



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 11:25:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13099101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Carl's last day on Earth.





	Goodnight, Love

**Author's Note:**

> gimple can choke!

When it happens, Carl feels it immediately. Sharp pain, and then warmth as the blood soaks into his shirt. He stands and sees Siddiq looking at him. The blood from the bite on his side drips down and blends with the walker blood drenching his back. 

Siddiq doesn’t need to know. And Carl sure as hell can’t bring himself to say it. They keep walking, Carl surreptitiously tucking his elbow against the wound. 

He remembers, with a sudden burst of clarity, a day from the camp in Atlanta. Before his dad even showed up. He had fallen, scraped up his hands on the gravel, and tried bravely not to cry. And Lori bandaged his hands with scraps of an old t-shirt and some tape. It was a big departure from the superhero Band-Aids he was used to, and she knew that. 

Lori had hunted down a Sharpie and drawn a fairly accurate picture of Spider-Man on Carl’s bandage. And he’d smiled. 

Now, Carl really just wants a clean shirt. Hell, he wants a lot— he wants Negan and the Saviors to leave them alone, he wants Glenn back, he wants to know that Maggie and Enid will be okay, he wants his sister to grow up somewhere safe. He wants to live. 

But at the moment, the shirt seems most urgent. He feels dirty and scared, and he can’t stop being scared. But he can be clean. That’s one tiny thing he can control. 

“I’ll bring you some food,” he promises Siddiq as they approach the walls. “You’ll be safe down here in the sewers. No walkers.” 

“Thank you,” Siddiq says, and as he climbs down below he takes one last look at Carl. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

How long does it take for the fever to set in? Carl can’t remember. “I’m fine,” he says. He forces a smile, and then he turns around and heads into Alexandria. 

Inside the house, Michonne’s trying to get Judith to eat some peas, but she’s being fussy. They both look up when Carl walks in. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Michonne says, spoon held aloft in her hand like she forgot about it. 

“Oh, you know,” he says casually, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Couple of walkers. I handled it.” Judith bangs her hands on the table and then waves at him with her chubby little hands. “Hey, Judy,” Carl says. “I’m gonna go change.” 

Upstairs, Carl pulls off his flannel and then his t-shirt, making sure the bathroom door is shut tight. Just like Siddiq, Michonne doesn’t need to know.

Not yet, anyway. 

He sweeps his hair away from his face and then looks down at his stomach. 

It’s bad— it was never going to be anything else, anyway. He already knew it was bad. But there’s something about seeing it, something about connecting the sticky-warm pain in his side to the image itself. Two crescent-moon gashes, and blood clotting up around them. He brushes his fingertips over the bite and, unable to help it, lets out a stifled, scared sob. Quiet enough. If Michonne asks, he could pass it off as a cough. 

He starts to examine the bite closer, but then he stops himself. He’s got an expiration date now; he can almost hear a clock ticking away his seconds. Carl opens a drawer and pulls out one of the gauze patches he uses for his eye. 

Perfect size. 

He strips off his blood-stained jeans and then he balls up all his clothes and throws them in the corner of the bathroom, doesn’t want to look at them, doesn’t want to think about them. When he’s dressed in fresh jeans and a fresh shirt, he walks back downstairs. 

Judith still hasn’t finished her peas.

“Aw, c’mere,” Carl says, lifting his little sister up from under her arms and balancing her on his knee. “You gotta eat, Judy. It’s good, see?” He takes the spoon from Michonne and swallows a few peas. “Mmm.”

What a last meal.

* * *

 

Michonne catches him coming back from bringing food to Siddiq. He tells her the truth— part of it. He can’t tell her the worst part yet, can’t tell her about the bandage and the blood under his shirt. 

And when Negan comes, when the big bad wolf comes knocking on the door, Carl does what he can to get his people to safety. He faces Negan alone, and when he asks to be the one killed he doesn’t say why. 

He doesn’t say it’s because he’s dying anyway.

With explosions ringing in his ears and smoke in his eyes, Carl limps through the wreckage of Alexandria. This is where he lost his eye. This is where he met Enid. This is maybe the safest home he’s known since he was ten years old. 

It’s all burning. 

His leg hurts and his side hurts and everything smells like smoke and death. And when he finally reaches the sewer with his people, it’s like all the energy flows out of him. He passes Michonne and she puts a comforting hand on his shoulder as he lowers himself down; she’s still waiting for his dad. 

Carl walks through the sewer tunnel, passing Daryl and Tara and Rosita. It feels like he’s walking past even more people. In the shadows, he feels like he can see his mother, and Shane, Dale, Andrea, Glenn. Like they’re waiting. 

He reaches the end of the line and slumps against the wall, sliding down to the ground. It’s dirty and he’s all out of clean shirts now. He looks over at Siddiq.

“Hey,” the traveler says, his face illuminated by the wavering candles in front of him. “Carl. You don’t look so good.”

“I know,” Carl says quietly, but he doesn’t elaborate. He sits in the dark, dirty sewer and he wonders if he’s going to live long enough to see his dad. 

“That’s how it happened,” he tells Rick and Michonne when they do reach him. He can see the question in their eyes, so he rolls up his shirt, peels back the bandage. He still can’t put it into words, but he doesn’t need to tell them. He can show them.

Michonne drops to her knees beside him, horrified, and his dad just looks… lost. Like he’s waiting for Carl to tell him it isn’t real. 

“Carl,” Michonne says.

“Negan was here,” Carl tells his dad, fading. “I tried to make him go… I tried to tell him, but—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Rick says, holding Carl’s hand loosely in his. “You did good. You did so good.” His face crumples and he bends down, holds Carl’s hand tightly against his chest. “You got all these people here. You did good…” Rick’s face, already damp with sweat, has tear tracks cutting grooves into the dirt and dust on his cheeks. 

Carl settles against the wall, but then remembers what’s in his bag. “I wrote you a letter,” he says, pulling out the envelope and handing it to his dad. Rick looks down at it and then back at Carl, eyes wide like he’s trying to envision it, Carl planning for this, Carl writing out his goodbyes, Carl preparing to die. 

“It’ll be okay, we’ll be okay,” Rick says desperately, wringing Carl’s hand between his own. “We can… we can figure this out.”

“Dad,” Carl says quietly. 

“Find you a doctor… you’ll be okay…” 

“Dad.” 

Rick breaks down, leaning into Carl like he’s the injured one. Seeing his dad cry makes Carl start crying again, and the three of them just hang on like that for a while, caught in the eye of a storm they can’t control. 

Eventually, Rick pushes himself up, wipes his face, kisses Carl on the forehead and says he’s going to go talk to Daryl. Once he walks down the other side the tunnel, Carl leans into Michonne. 

“Are you… does it hurt?” she says. 

“It did,” he says. “Not anymore. I’m just… cold.” She tugs him away from the wall so she can loop an arm around him, and then she pulls him close so he’s resting his head against her shoulder. “Michonne.”

“Mm?”

“When it happens… I want it to be you,” he says, remembering how they talked about it before once, on the porch at night.  _ It should be someone who loved her, someone who’s family, and I… I’d do it for you _ . “I want you to be the one to… you know.” 

Michonne bites her lip but it doesn’t keep the tears from pooling in her eyes. “Of course,” she says, nodding. “Of course, Carl.” A sob breaks free. “I love you so much, you know that? You’re so brave and so good and I… I love you.” 

“I love you, too,” Carl says, curling closer into her side like he might have done as a small boy with Lori. 

Rick comes back then, looking wrecked, and Carl tries not to think about what’s going to happen to him after but he can’t help it. He knows what happened to his dad after his mom died, and he knows what happened to Michonne when she lost her son. Rick sits on Carl’s other side and holds his hand, and they wait out the night.

At one point, Carl asks for Judith. She’s been a beacon of hope and comfort for him for so long— and more importantly, she’s his little sister. He loves her. He wants to see her again. Daryl comes over and passes her over to Carl, Judith’s sleepy eyes blinking up at her big brother. 

Daryl looks pretty messed up. He puts a hand on Carl’s shoulder, nods, and then goes to sit down again. 

“Hey, Judith,” Carl says, combing her hair out of her face with his fingers. She makes a face. Carl looks around at the dirty tunnel. “I know, it sucks, right? All dark and cold… but we’ll… you’ll get back somewhere warm and dry soon,” he promises. “I love you, Judy.” He kisses her forehead and she kisses his cheek, and then she settles in his arms and dozes off again. It takes about two minutes. “You know, I was always kinda jealous of how easy it is for her to go to sleep.” 

They sit there, a family of four knowing it’s about to become a family of three, and dreading it. Carl looks at his dad, at the woman who’s like his mother, at his baby sister. Something catches in his throat when he looks down at Judith.

“She’s… she’s not gonna remember me,” he says.

“We won’t let her forget.” Michonne’s full-on crying now. “I promise you. We’ll tell her all about you, we… we won’t let her forget, Carl.” 

Carl swipes at his face. “I’m so tired of crying,” he says, and almost laughs, and Michonne smiles. “Hey, I wrote Enid a letter too.” He looks to Michonne. “Make sure she gets it, okay?” 

“Of course.” 

“Dad.” Rick squeezes his hand. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Carl.” 

“I’m getting… I’m getting kind of tired,” Carl admits. He looks gray, all the color leaching from his face. “I’m just gonna… gonna go to sleep, I think.” 

“That’s okay,” Rick says, sounding twenty years older than he is. “You can do that, Carl.” 

“Okay.” Carl leans his head back and he looks up at Rick and Michonne. “You’ll still be right here when I wake up?” 

Michonne nods. “We won’t leave your side.”

“Okay,” he says softly. “Goodnight.” 


End file.
